It's that time of year when people Up North look to the leaves to indicate a change of season. Nights are getting cooler, cold even, and the leaves change color and there may be a hint of first on the air.

In Key West Fall is the height of hurricane season, right now, and this year we are doing well thanks to El Niño in the Pacific Ocean which sucks the strength out of Atlantic Hurricane season. October also means Fantasy Fest in Key West, these days fashionably dissed by locals who don't depend on it for money and who feel violated by visitors taking their clothes off in public. As of today I am back on night shift and I will be working the night of the parade so I will miss the few local floats worth seeing as they parade down here.

Fall in Key West also means the end of rainy season, this after one of the wettest summers on record (no climate change folks, nothing to see here, move along) and one looks aloft for the first cold front of winter to come along to start the process of killing off muggy summer air. Some tourists check their phones instead of looking aloft.

Winter will bring cooler days and nights with lots of warm sunny days. Last winter we barely had any cold weather at all. Cold in Key West has its own definitions, essentially anything under seventy degrees. Visitors are surprised sometimes by how cold 60 degrees feels in the breezy damp salt air of the Florida Keys, but it does get cold. It's hard to imagine as you stand on Duval spontaneously sweating but the season will change.

Cheyenne will come to life too as the days cool off and short walks will get longer. Right now I'm enjoy ing smaller crowds in town and open sidewalks.

You'll hear people tell you cycling on sidewalks is illegal but actually it's not in Florida. Bicycles yield to pedestrians and have to announce their approach audibly but cycling on the sidewalk is legal. Interestingly Key West outlaws skateboarding on Duval Street.

Shopping is very legal an dust catchers are available up and down the street from shops and licensed trinket stands.

Key West Diary

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"Given previous influenza pandemics, and this not an influenza virus so we don't know for certain it will act like that, but if it did, by far the second wave was the worst one of each of the pandemics....A second wave (of COVID-19) in late summer or early fall that lasts three or four months could make everything we've experienced so far seem mild."